Creating & Editing Lights

Great lighting is one of the most significant parts of a great shot; choosing colours, locations and positions, types, sizes, shape - and even the intensity of a light - can drastically influence how the audience feels. Whether it's used to improve the composition between subjects and elements of a shot or to pop and separate your subject from the background, proper application of light is your key to finding success.

This section might seem a little daunting to wrap your head around at first, but with time, it will start coming to you naturally.

Rectangle Lights

Rectangle Lights are light sources that emit light from their entire polygonal surface, as opposed to the Point and Spot Lights that emit only light from a single point in space.
Because of this, Rect lights are some of the largest and softest lights available to use in Unreal Engine and are great at creating natural looking light.
You can control the amount of and direction of the light emitting from a Rect light by increasing the length of and angling its barn doors.

Source Height:

The length of your light source. Increasing your source size produces softer light.

Source Width:

The width of your light source. Increasing your source size produces softer light.

Barn Door Angle

Increase or decrease your barn door angle to control the amount of light spill.

Barn Door Length

Increase or decrease your barn door length to control the amount of light spill.

Spot Lights

Spot Lights are light sources that emit light from a singular point in space into the shape of a cone, gradually increasing in area the further from the source it travels.
Due to the default source size being small, though it has the ability to scale, Spot Lights are a happy medium, being able to both produce soft and hard light.
You can increase the area of illumination by increasing the cone angle, and increase how far the light travels by increasing the attenuation radius.

Cone Angle

The Inner Cone Angle is where the light achieves full brightness. The Outer Cone Angle is where the light value equals zero. The distance between the Inner and Outer Cone Angle is where falloff occurs producing a penumbra, fading between the highest brightness (Inner) and lowest brightness (outer).

Set Inner Cone Angle

Set the size of the Inner Cone, the brightest value.

Set Outer Cone Angle

Set the size of the Outer Cone, the dimmest value.

Point Lights

Point Lights are a light source that emit light from a singular point in space in all directions (360°). They are quite literally the digital twin of a lightbulb and behave as such.
Because of this, Point Lights tend to be great at recreating artificial indoor light for small, intimate scenes or anything in nature that emits a light source, like torches or fires.
They are also the most expensive lighting type in Unreal, so when using Point Lights exercise a moment of caution and ensure they're used deliberately.

Source Radius

Increase the size of your source. Increasing your source radius produces softer light.

Soft Source Radius

Edit the size of your soft source radius. Similar to fall off, this controls the magnitude of your soft light.

Source Length

Edit the length of your source light shape.

Fall Off Exponent

Control the amount of light fall off. This defines the edge of your light in the world; lower values have a harder edge, while higher values produce a softer edge.

Hard Light

Hard light comes from a singular light source that is often time smaller than the subject it is lighting and very close to it.
Hard light is characterized as hard, obtuse shadows on surfaces with almost no falloff (or fading).
In general, Hard light is used for back/rim lighting, and for producing punchy and bold images.

Soft Light

Soft light is produced when you have a large light source very far away from the subject. The further and larger the source, the softer your light becomes.
Soft light is characterized as soft, gradual shadows on surfaces with a noticeable amount of falloff (or fading).
Soft light tends to "wrap around" subjects and surfaces and is generally used for key lighting or fill lighting a subject. It is generally used for producing soft, gentle, or life-like images.

Moveable Lights

Toggles the light to be dynamic, which allows for real-time shadows to affect moving actors in the scene, such as animated characters or environments.
You can only edit a light's intensity and colour if it is set to be moveable.
Moveable lights are the slowest to render, but they are also the most dynamic.

Light Intensity

The total energy that the light emits.
Light intensity is measured in Unreal's default luminosity unit; lumens.
Lower values produce a dim light; higher values produce a bright light.

Colour

Control your created lights colour from here.
Combine varying amounts of red, green or blue channel values to produce the desired colour.

Advanced Features

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